The present disclosure relates generally to routing requests over a network. As internet usage grows exponentially, the demand for internet related services is also growing rapidly. As a result of the increased usage of the internet, the demand for domain names is also growing rapidly. Consequently, demand for domain related services is also on the rise. Such domain related services can include domain name creation, domain name registration renewal, and the like. Typically, a website serves as a primary vehicle for establishing an online presence for a domain name. To meet this ever increasing demand for domain name related services, it is necessary that the entities that provide these service do so in an efficient and cost-effective manner.
The Domain Name System (DNS) is the part of the Internet infrastructure that translates human-readable domain names into the Internet Protocol (IP) numbers needed to establish TCP/IP communication over the Internet. DNS allows users to refer to web sites, and other resources, using easier to remember domain names, such as “www.example.com”, rather than the numeric IP addresses associated with a website, e.g., 123.4.56.78, and assigned to computers on the Internet. Each domain name can be made up of a series of character strings (labels) separated by dots. The right-most label in a domain name is known as the “top-level domain” (TLD). Examples of well-known TLDs are “com”; “net”; “org” etc. Each TLD supports second-level domains, listed immediately to the left of the TLD, e.g. the “example” level in “www.example.com”. Each second-level domain can include a number of third-level domains located immediately to the left of the second-level domain, e.g. the “www” level in www.example.com.
The responsibility for operating each TLD (including maintaining a registry of the second-level domains within the TLD) is delegated to a particular organization, known as a domain name registry (“registry”). The registry is primarily responsible for answering queries for IP addresses associated with domains (“resolving”), typically through DNS servers that maintain such information in large databases, and operating its top-level domain.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has authority over the generic TLDs like dotcom and dotnet. In order to obtain a domain name, that domain name has to be registered with ICANN. Registration of domain names can be done, e.g., through a domain name registrar. A registrar is an entity that is accredited by ICANN or by a national ccTLD (country code TLD) authority, to register Internet domain names. Alternatively, an end-user can register a domain name indirectly through one or more layers of resellers.
A registrar usually has a dedicated service connection with the registries in order to access domain related services, e.g., domain name creation or renewal. Registrars typically use the Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP) as a vehicle to communicate with the registries in order to register or renew domain names. The EPP is a protocol designed for allocating objects within registries over the internet. The EPP protocol is based on XML—a structured, text-based format. The underlying network transport is not fixed, although the currently specified method is over Transmission Control Protocol (TCP).